Journal Entry 20.00 The Air Temple
Party explores the Air Temple. Morvion dies. Dunger gains his temple enhancement.
Once everyone is rested up with spells memorized, prayers are made for the day, and the night’s fast broken, the party leaves the fire temple, ready for potential combat with the giants.
Graykar sneaks out first and once he sees the giants milling around, not really prepared for an ambush, he gives the all clear to the rest of the party.
They all walk out as one. Klaus sees them and walks up to the base of the temple, “Congratulations, you unlocked the next temple. One more to go.”
They trade a few words, both obviously wary of the other group. Then Klaus says, “Lord Azurellicus has informed us that he is pleased one was added to your number.” Obviously talking about Dunger. “It takes eight to open the final lock to the obelisk. You are one closer to the needed number.”
Not pursuing this conversation, the party takes the comment in stride and states they are going to the next temple. The giants make no moves to impede the actions of the party.
Entering the temple via a stone arch near the top of the temple, they see a large steel door about 20 feet in. Walking up to the door, they notice that the floor tiles appear to be made of glass through which clouds are visible. They can vaguely make out clouds, or what might be clouds if the temple was high in the sky. As they peer at the clouds, they see them moving across the sky seen n the floor just like real clouds.
Making his way to the door, Graykar examines it and finds no lock. “It appears to be a sliding door, I can’t even fit my tools into the gap. We’ll need to find a release or a lever, or possibly Morvion can write the air symbol of blood on the door,” in obvious reference to how Urik opened his temple.
As they look around for a catch or release, Dunger notices a large six-inch hole in the side wall. Looking down the hole, they see it runs roughly twenty feet deep and ends in something red. The hole entrance is about 5 feet off the ground.
Playing a hunch, Morvion enchants his spear with its returning aspect and throws it down the hole at the red thing at the end. When it hits, a loud grinding sound starts rumbling deep in the wall and the steel door slides up into the ceiling.
A short way beyond the first door lies a second door. This door has intricate carvings covering it, a mix of glyphs and symbols. Aja immediately recognizes it as the complex script she is now associating with the temple builders. Not having time, she makes plans to get a copy of the doors at a later time as they are leaving.
The door appears to be made of white stone. As Graykar examines the door he again says, “No visible lock.” He shakes the doors a little and suspects there might be a block on the otherside.
Before they try pushing through, they set out looking for another release. Noticing that there are tiny cracks and holes leading into the door, Dunger transforms into a cockroach and starts scurrying up the door. Perhaps he can open it from the otherside.
Gigi makes a little squeak to which Aja says, “No, we don’t eat party members.” He squeaks again prompting Aja to add “Even if they are smaller than you. Might I remind you, you are smaller than the orcs over there?” to which Gigi puffs out his chest and snorts.
Dunger crawls through and finds a small room. In the room, he sees that the door is blocked by a big iron crossbar. Across from it is another set of doors at the far end, made of the same material with similar markings. Transforming back into his dwarf from, he opens the doors, turns once again into a cockroach and crawls through the next set of doors. Overall there are three sets of doors blocked with similar crossbars.
Once through the final set of doors, the party sees a larger room containing two alabaster statues both of women. Each woman has a hand stretched toward the other with the space in between containing a vertical swirling disk of glowing energy.
A quick examination reveals the disc to be a simple teleportation disc with no traps. Once Morvion and Aja give the all clear to step through, the party does so.
Appearing on the other side of the teleportation disc, the party finds themselves on a large stone platform floating thousands of feet above the surface of the ground. The swirling teleportation disc on this side is also supported by two alabaster statues, identical to the ones just left behind.
Carefully looking over the edge of the platform, the can see they are well above the cloud layer. Several feet from their platform, the party can make out a sizeable chunk of rock about five feet in diameter also floating. Beyond it, another larger rock floating and several more creating a path of floating stepping stones. In the distance, they see a gap in the path before the stones pick up again which ends at another stone platform also containing a teleportation disc between two statues.
Taking their time, they examine their surroundings. Morvion is the first to notice that his detect magic is failing at a rather close distance to the platform. “I believe that there is another no magic zone just a ways out,” he states with confidence, having seen this effect a few times now.
Aja concurs, “It seems the null magic field is lining the path like walls of a hallway. As we cross, we best be careful. It is a long way down.”
Holding a rope for safety, Graykar jumps to the first floating stone, then the next. Using the rope for safety, the rest of the party starts to cross. Aja is already flying, while Morvion tugs on his suspenders to activate his levitation to aid in a safe crossing.
Being careful not to fall, they make their way to the last floating stone before the break in the path.
Having taken several large sniffs, Urik announces, “This air is familiar. It’s not like the air back outside the jungle, it smells like the air inside the world of the water temple.”
Aja nods and agrees. Her elemental connection to air can feel the familiar essence of this world’s air. She says, “It actually makes sense. Some of the books we have found have been referencing another world. I believe that when we are in the temples, we are actually in that other world. I bet if someone fell here, the land down below would be that world.”
“And if we died here, would we wake up in the village the next day, then?” Graykar asks.
“Possibly,” is all Aja says not entirely certain.
Dunger looks back and forth as they are speaking, clearly confused by their conversation but not saying anything.
As they examine the gap, Morvion feels his spear vibrate in response to some type of illusion or glamour in the vicinity. For safety, he casts fly on Graykar. Graykar then takes the rope and starts to fly out slowly over the gap. He makes it most of the way to the other side when he comes up against an invisible barrier. Feeling around the wall, he makes his way past it eventually and takes a gamble by flying quickly toward the nearest rock. He knows that there is a null magic field likely in his way, however, he expects his momentum to be enough to carry through enough to where he can land on the rock. And if not, he is still holding the rope.
As he passes through the field, his magical flight disappears, then reappears shortly thereafter once he is almost to the rock. Landing on the rock safely, he does his best to secure the rope.
Morvion then casts fly on the rest of the party. They carefully cross over themselves. As they do so, they discover that the invisible walls appear in different locations for each party member. However, as they were forewarned, none of the party members careens into a wall at high speed. Feeling their way to the edges, the party successfully passes through the gap in the pass.
From there, they have no difficulty getting to the other stone landing. On this landing is another spinning teleportation disc held between two statues. Using this disc, the party moves to the next part of the air temple.
Once they pass through the teleportation discs, the party finds they are once again inside a large room with white marble tiles. Exiting the room are two passages which intersect at the room, one going diagonally to the left and one going diagonally to the right. Both corridors end in separate double doors.
Taking the passage to their right, they examine the door and see that it is just a simple wooden door.
Cautiously opening it, they see the inside of the room consists of large black tiles with the grout lines illuminating the room with hellish green glow. The green glow is causing the room to exist in perpetual shadows, the flicking of the tile light causing the shadows the shift despite there being nothing in the room to block their light. At the far side of the room is a single stone agate table of dark red hue. On it, the party can see a single bottle.
Graykar vanishes from sight and begins sneaking across the room. He can see several shadows flying around the room which don’t seem to notice him. Reaching the table, he carefully touches the bottle and then retracts his hand with a jerk from a searing pain. The bottle is extremely cold, cold enough to cause frost damage to his fingers.
Meanwhile, Urik and Tars enter the room and are immediately attacked by the shadows, which coalesce into horrid creatures made of darkness. Each creature has rudimentary wings and rather than have a face, they have a large sucker at the end like a giant mouth. As the party fights the creatures they find that it doesn’t take too much to kill any one of them as long as they don’t get struck in the process, as Tars finds out. When one latches on to Tars’s arm briefly, he feels his strength drain out of him.
Graykar takes some cloth and padding his hands, moves the bottle into his backpack.
After they kill several of the creatures, they realize that new creatures just keep spawning. There never seems to be more than three at time, however as one goes down, a new one forms. Figuring this out, they back out of the room and once they see the creatures are not following, they close the door and go down the other corridor.
Beyond that door, they see a large circular room. The floor of this room once again appears to be made of glass, looking down clouds from above. Forming a circle at the outer edge of the room are about twenty green crystals even spaced. Each crystal is glowing brightly and stands about three feet tall.
As they cautiously enter the room, nothing happens at first. Morvion is one of the first ones in, wishing to look closer at the crystals which appear very similar in cut to the head of his spear.
Then Graykar is attacked. Feeling like he has been shaken as he is vibrated to his bones, he lashes out in the direction where he perceived the attack to come from. The party rushes in and tries to locate the source of the attacks, but can’t seem to pinpoint where the creatures are at.
Tars rushes in and starts swinging wilding around with his sword, hoping to connect with any target. As the attacks hit him, he only gets more frustrated.
Aja uses her phase shifting sight to try and see them and is able to see in the air hazy images of where she believes them to be at. They appear as fields of shimmering air similar to heat rising off of a hot road. Calling out locations doesn’t seem to work. As they continue to strike at the party, frustration ensues as they can’t seem to hit back.
Aja resorts to casting dancing lights and places a lantern of light in the middle of each of the shimmers. Still, they can’t seem to hit their targets. Getting tired of attacking and missing, Tars instead attacks one of the green crystals after noticing that they seem to pulse around the same time that the attacks occur.
As the crystal shatters, Morvion lets out a small scream of pain. Lancing up through his hand, he feels a weakening of his spear. His close connection to the spear is also causing damage to himself as the crystal shatters. “Tars – don’t destroy the crystals. If you do, I fear you may kill me.”
Tars breaks off and continues to try and attack the sonic creatures attacking them, weighing Morvion’s life to the need to destroy this threat.
Morvion finally manages to hit one of centers of where the attacks are coming from by using Aja’s dancing lights as an indicator. As his spear slashes in, he feels a surge of power as the sonic energy is absorbed first into the spear and then into him.
With none of the party being able to hit these things except Morvion, the rest of the party leaves the room. Whatever they are, they are not attacking him, they just sit there as he goes around and takes out the final four – each with a surge of energy flowing into him.
As he finishes the last one, the entire party feels the rush of power they have come to associate with unlocking a temple. The rush of power that Aja’s friend Kensi referred to as ‘divine spark.’
As they slowly make their way back from the rooms, Tars is still pissed that he were unable to hit the sonic creatures. Aja conjectures, “I don’t think there was anything there to actually hit. You were trying to hit air.”
“If it can hit me, I should have been able to hit it,” Tars reasons. Graykar nods in agreement.
“Not necessarily,” she continues to try and explain. “If it was a manifestation of the green crystals centralized where I saw the disturbance, a harmonic in the air where I saw the disturbance that is, it was just air. I think it was coming from the crystals.”
Tars continues to argue the point all the way back to the entrance before letting it drop once Aja says tartly, “There was nothing there, You were trying to attack air. You hit the air, happy?” Aja just shakes her head, sometimes concepts are just a little much form some of her friends to follow.
Coming up on the entrance, the party decides to rest again, before heading out to meet the giants. While they rest, they discuss the bottle they had found.
“It must mean something if it was in the temple?” Morvion insists.
Urik rolls his eyes, “Another puzzle. Great.”
Urik and Aja try and touch the bottle, and it causes freezing damage to them also. Even Aja isn’t entirely immune, “It’s cold, but it is not physically cold, it is spiritually cold. Something tied to the negative energy of undead.”
“An evil puzzle, even better,” Urik spits out.
As Morvion tries to touch it, it doesn’t burn him like the rest of the party. Taking this as a good sign, he takes off the cap, “If we all have a temple, the air temple is obviously tied to my spear.” He tries pouring the contents out. Forming on the ground, the black oily substance pools and then starts moving back toward the bottle.
The party tries several ways to interact with the substance from peaceful to destructive in that they try and set it aflame.
Carefully examining the bottle, the arcane users determine it has qualities similar to other artifacts, possibly even similar to the artifact each of them carries.
Finally, Morvion shrugs and tilts his head back, pouring the black contents into his mouth. Morvion falls dead.
The bottle rolls to the side of Morvion. The party watches aghast as the substance then begins to retreat out of Morvion’s mouth, crawling back toward the bottle.
Dunger is impressed with how little the rest of the party seems concerned, very dwarf like. he thinks until he learns that Aja has the rare ability to raise dead. She will need the night to prepare, however, she says she can do it.
The next morning, Morvion is raised. Everyone is happy to have Morvion back, though both Urik and Tars start pestering him about how it feels to die nobly in pursuit of glory. Morvion shakes his head, “Only orcs find glory in death. Dead is dead.” Taking this a cue, for the rest of the morning Tars continues to tease Morvion about his death experience.
Considering the bottle, Dunger has remained silent. He then speaks up, “Mind if I borrow the tongs, I wish to try something with bottle.”
Poring the potion out on the cloak, the oily substance reacts differently this time. Rather than trying to get back in the bottle it starts spreading out over the cloak. As it begins moving up the cloak toward Dunger, he starts trying to back away with the clock on.
"Guys - uh, Guys? I am not feeling the most comfortable about this."
Aja suppresses a giggle, she's never seen an anxiety-ridden dwarf before. "Hold on a second, the different reaction is probably a good sign."
"But Morvion died," he frantically says as he starts to undo the claps to the cloak.
"And I brought him back," Aja explained, trying to calm the dwarf. "Plus, Morvion swallowed the substance, we are just wanting to see what happens when it touches you. Besides Tars, you didn’t touch the bottle either." Aja feels fairly certain she has figured it out.
She ticks off on her fingers, "One - we know that Dunger has an artifact. Two - we know that there isn't a sixth temple of which we are aware, meaning that nothing is specific to Dunger like this air temple is to Morvion."
"However, if we allow for a temple being for multiple individuals, we would need to see some supporting evidence. We would need to see something like," again ticking off, "One - Were there doors or challenges which required Dunger to unlock? Two - was there any distinction like a fork in the road which would indicate this temple had two different sections? Three - is there a viable connection between one section of the temple and one of our artifacts."
Catching her breath, "Since we know Morvion achieved his goal, and we know that we still have an artifact level magic here unused, the next questions is - is there any artifact with a direct connection - like to shadow. I think your cloak qualifies, Dunger."
While Aja pontificates her theory, Dunger ignores her and succeeds in undoing the claps and throwing the cloak to the floor. As it sits there, the oily substance resumes moving around the cloak for another thirty seconds then starts once again moving to the bottle.
"Interesting," Aja says.
Tars then says, having a thought, "Didn't the big green man say something about their needing to be more than five of us?"
"Good point," Aja replies, now confident in her sleuthing abilities, holding up her hand again with four fingers outstretched to emphasize another point made.
Graykar then adds, "He did say that however, I got the distinct impression he wasn't being completely truthful with that statement."
Dunger doesn't like it but at Urik’s urging, he agrees to allow it to touch him. “If it hurts me, I demands Gigi as a snack.”
Sticking his head out of Aja's voluminous white hair, Gigi chirps out a few noisy squeaks in what everyone can tell are possibly sentences. Aja answers him wryly, aware that Dunger is dark attempts at humor are lost on her bat, "No, I don't think he knows that you're the conduit for all my spells. Yes, including Raise Dead. And Icy Prison. And ... you don't know Flesh to Stone!"
Dunger ponders this. “My bear side wishes to eat the bird, however the idea of becoming one with a mountain has its charm.”
"Gigi," Aja says coolly, "is not . . . a . . .bird. One would think dwarves would be more familiar with bats, given how much time they spend under the ground." Did he fail druid school to not recognize a bat from a bird?
Her voice warming, she uses metal tongs to lift the bottle of black ichor from the ground, sloshing it back and forth in a way she clearly intends to be threatening. "What's the worst that can happen?" she says, waggling her eyebrows at Morvion.
Dunger solemnly nods. “I am ready. However, if I die turn my body to stone and return me to my forest. You return me to this hellhole again and I’ll slaughter you all.”
Aja is still getting used to her new comrades short burst of grumpiness. With Dunger ready, wearing the cloak once again, she tilts the bottle to pour the liquid out on his cloak.
The black ooze slowly starts moving up the cloak toward Dunger's skin. He stolidly braces himself, staring ahead with resolute firmness. As it begins to touch his skin, he shakes a little. "It's cold. Oh boy, is it cold."
It continues to move toward his skin and starts mixing into his beard, roaming closer and closer to his mouth. Dunger finally breaks, "Yeah - time to get it off, time to get it off. It's going toward my mouth."
The party stands back, unsure of how to help. They watch as Dunger claws at the liquid with his hands. The liquid does not cling to his hands, it just keeps moving up his beard toward his mouth and nose. With his mouth firmly shut, it begins to go up his nose.
Dunger starts coughing with a ragged sound, his eyes wide. As he coughs, it gets in his mouth and starts filling it. The look of helplessness in his eyes as he pleads with the party for help causes them to stand around with paralysis, uncertain what to do. Urik begins casting healing spells trying to help Dunger, calling out to Josca for help.
Choking and spasming, his face turning blue then black. Dunger drops to the ground. He is motionless.
Aja mutters, "Crap."
Gigi chirps, "Uh oh," and begins looking for a place to hide in Aja's hair.
Tars nods, "Saw that coming. So Aja - who you having try it next?"
Morvion kneels near Dunger without actually touching him and starts into one of his solemn speeches, "Dwarf, I know few of your kind. You have managed yourself with honor. I will do my utmost to honor your death request."
Urik begins to focus so he can turn back time. Knowing he can do it and actually doing it are two different things.
Graykar says, "Well, this is something I haven't seen before. Oh wait, I saw it like just a few hours ago."
As the party stares, Dunger begins to dissolve into a black mist. After a few seconds, nothing is left of him or his equipment except a gaseous cloud floating above the floor.
“And this I really haven’t seen before,” Graykar says.
A few seconds later, the cloud begins to rise and assumes a humanoid form.
The party draws their weapons, ready for an attack.
Then the mist starts to solidify into Dunger. As it does so, he states, "Hmmpf. That was different." He then concentrates and turns into a gaseous cloud again. Then back, Then a cloud again. "I think I can do this at will."
"More clouds!!" Aja exclaims, clapping her hands together and bouncing from foot to foot.
Graykar sneaks out first and once he sees the giants milling around, not really prepared for an ambush, he gives the all clear to the rest of the party.
They all walk out as one. Klaus sees them and walks up to the base of the temple, “Congratulations, you unlocked the next temple. One more to go.”
They trade a few words, both obviously wary of the other group. Then Klaus says, “Lord Azurellicus has informed us that he is pleased one was added to your number.” Obviously talking about Dunger. “It takes eight to open the final lock to the obelisk. You are one closer to the needed number.”
Not pursuing this conversation, the party takes the comment in stride and states they are going to the next temple. The giants make no moves to impede the actions of the party.
Entering the temple via a stone arch near the top of the temple, they see a large steel door about 20 feet in. Walking up to the door, they notice that the floor tiles appear to be made of glass through which clouds are visible. They can vaguely make out clouds, or what might be clouds if the temple was high in the sky. As they peer at the clouds, they see them moving across the sky seen n the floor just like real clouds.
Making his way to the door, Graykar examines it and finds no lock. “It appears to be a sliding door, I can’t even fit my tools into the gap. We’ll need to find a release or a lever, or possibly Morvion can write the air symbol of blood on the door,” in obvious reference to how Urik opened his temple.
As they look around for a catch or release, Dunger notices a large six-inch hole in the side wall. Looking down the hole, they see it runs roughly twenty feet deep and ends in something red. The hole entrance is about 5 feet off the ground.
Playing a hunch, Morvion enchants his spear with its returning aspect and throws it down the hole at the red thing at the end. When it hits, a loud grinding sound starts rumbling deep in the wall and the steel door slides up into the ceiling.
A short way beyond the first door lies a second door. This door has intricate carvings covering it, a mix of glyphs and symbols. Aja immediately recognizes it as the complex script she is now associating with the temple builders. Not having time, she makes plans to get a copy of the doors at a later time as they are leaving.
The door appears to be made of white stone. As Graykar examines the door he again says, “No visible lock.” He shakes the doors a little and suspects there might be a block on the otherside.
Before they try pushing through, they set out looking for another release. Noticing that there are tiny cracks and holes leading into the door, Dunger transforms into a cockroach and starts scurrying up the door. Perhaps he can open it from the otherside.
Gigi makes a little squeak to which Aja says, “No, we don’t eat party members.” He squeaks again prompting Aja to add “Even if they are smaller than you. Might I remind you, you are smaller than the orcs over there?” to which Gigi puffs out his chest and snorts.
Dunger crawls through and finds a small room. In the room, he sees that the door is blocked by a big iron crossbar. Across from it is another set of doors at the far end, made of the same material with similar markings. Transforming back into his dwarf from, he opens the doors, turns once again into a cockroach and crawls through the next set of doors. Overall there are three sets of doors blocked with similar crossbars.
Once through the final set of doors, the party sees a larger room containing two alabaster statues both of women. Each woman has a hand stretched toward the other with the space in between containing a vertical swirling disk of glowing energy.
A quick examination reveals the disc to be a simple teleportation disc with no traps. Once Morvion and Aja give the all clear to step through, the party does so.
Appearing on the other side of the teleportation disc, the party finds themselves on a large stone platform floating thousands of feet above the surface of the ground. The swirling teleportation disc on this side is also supported by two alabaster statues, identical to the ones just left behind.
Carefully looking over the edge of the platform, the can see they are well above the cloud layer. Several feet from their platform, the party can make out a sizeable chunk of rock about five feet in diameter also floating. Beyond it, another larger rock floating and several more creating a path of floating stepping stones. In the distance, they see a gap in the path before the stones pick up again which ends at another stone platform also containing a teleportation disc between two statues.
Taking their time, they examine their surroundings. Morvion is the first to notice that his detect magic is failing at a rather close distance to the platform. “I believe that there is another no magic zone just a ways out,” he states with confidence, having seen this effect a few times now.
Aja concurs, “It seems the null magic field is lining the path like walls of a hallway. As we cross, we best be careful. It is a long way down.”
Holding a rope for safety, Graykar jumps to the first floating stone, then the next. Using the rope for safety, the rest of the party starts to cross. Aja is already flying, while Morvion tugs on his suspenders to activate his levitation to aid in a safe crossing.
Being careful not to fall, they make their way to the last floating stone before the break in the path.
Having taken several large sniffs, Urik announces, “This air is familiar. It’s not like the air back outside the jungle, it smells like the air inside the world of the water temple.”
Aja nods and agrees. Her elemental connection to air can feel the familiar essence of this world’s air. She says, “It actually makes sense. Some of the books we have found have been referencing another world. I believe that when we are in the temples, we are actually in that other world. I bet if someone fell here, the land down below would be that world.”
“And if we died here, would we wake up in the village the next day, then?” Graykar asks.
“Possibly,” is all Aja says not entirely certain.
Dunger looks back and forth as they are speaking, clearly confused by their conversation but not saying anything.
As they examine the gap, Morvion feels his spear vibrate in response to some type of illusion or glamour in the vicinity. For safety, he casts fly on Graykar. Graykar then takes the rope and starts to fly out slowly over the gap. He makes it most of the way to the other side when he comes up against an invisible barrier. Feeling around the wall, he makes his way past it eventually and takes a gamble by flying quickly toward the nearest rock. He knows that there is a null magic field likely in his way, however, he expects his momentum to be enough to carry through enough to where he can land on the rock. And if not, he is still holding the rope.
As he passes through the field, his magical flight disappears, then reappears shortly thereafter once he is almost to the rock. Landing on the rock safely, he does his best to secure the rope.
Morvion then casts fly on the rest of the party. They carefully cross over themselves. As they do so, they discover that the invisible walls appear in different locations for each party member. However, as they were forewarned, none of the party members careens into a wall at high speed. Feeling their way to the edges, the party successfully passes through the gap in the pass.
From there, they have no difficulty getting to the other stone landing. On this landing is another spinning teleportation disc held between two statues. Using this disc, the party moves to the next part of the air temple.
Once they pass through the teleportation discs, the party finds they are once again inside a large room with white marble tiles. Exiting the room are two passages which intersect at the room, one going diagonally to the left and one going diagonally to the right. Both corridors end in separate double doors.
Taking the passage to their right, they examine the door and see that it is just a simple wooden door.
Cautiously opening it, they see the inside of the room consists of large black tiles with the grout lines illuminating the room with hellish green glow. The green glow is causing the room to exist in perpetual shadows, the flicking of the tile light causing the shadows the shift despite there being nothing in the room to block their light. At the far side of the room is a single stone agate table of dark red hue. On it, the party can see a single bottle.
Graykar vanishes from sight and begins sneaking across the room. He can see several shadows flying around the room which don’t seem to notice him. Reaching the table, he carefully touches the bottle and then retracts his hand with a jerk from a searing pain. The bottle is extremely cold, cold enough to cause frost damage to his fingers.
Meanwhile, Urik and Tars enter the room and are immediately attacked by the shadows, which coalesce into horrid creatures made of darkness. Each creature has rudimentary wings and rather than have a face, they have a large sucker at the end like a giant mouth. As the party fights the creatures they find that it doesn’t take too much to kill any one of them as long as they don’t get struck in the process, as Tars finds out. When one latches on to Tars’s arm briefly, he feels his strength drain out of him.
Graykar takes some cloth and padding his hands, moves the bottle into his backpack.
After they kill several of the creatures, they realize that new creatures just keep spawning. There never seems to be more than three at time, however as one goes down, a new one forms. Figuring this out, they back out of the room and once they see the creatures are not following, they close the door and go down the other corridor.
Beyond that door, they see a large circular room. The floor of this room once again appears to be made of glass, looking down clouds from above. Forming a circle at the outer edge of the room are about twenty green crystals even spaced. Each crystal is glowing brightly and stands about three feet tall.
As they cautiously enter the room, nothing happens at first. Morvion is one of the first ones in, wishing to look closer at the crystals which appear very similar in cut to the head of his spear.
Then Graykar is attacked. Feeling like he has been shaken as he is vibrated to his bones, he lashes out in the direction where he perceived the attack to come from. The party rushes in and tries to locate the source of the attacks, but can’t seem to pinpoint where the creatures are at.
Tars rushes in and starts swinging wilding around with his sword, hoping to connect with any target. As the attacks hit him, he only gets more frustrated.
Aja uses her phase shifting sight to try and see them and is able to see in the air hazy images of where she believes them to be at. They appear as fields of shimmering air similar to heat rising off of a hot road. Calling out locations doesn’t seem to work. As they continue to strike at the party, frustration ensues as they can’t seem to hit back.
Aja resorts to casting dancing lights and places a lantern of light in the middle of each of the shimmers. Still, they can’t seem to hit their targets. Getting tired of attacking and missing, Tars instead attacks one of the green crystals after noticing that they seem to pulse around the same time that the attacks occur.
As the crystal shatters, Morvion lets out a small scream of pain. Lancing up through his hand, he feels a weakening of his spear. His close connection to the spear is also causing damage to himself as the crystal shatters. “Tars – don’t destroy the crystals. If you do, I fear you may kill me.”
Tars breaks off and continues to try and attack the sonic creatures attacking them, weighing Morvion’s life to the need to destroy this threat.
Morvion finally manages to hit one of centers of where the attacks are coming from by using Aja’s dancing lights as an indicator. As his spear slashes in, he feels a surge of power as the sonic energy is absorbed first into the spear and then into him.
With none of the party being able to hit these things except Morvion, the rest of the party leaves the room. Whatever they are, they are not attacking him, they just sit there as he goes around and takes out the final four – each with a surge of energy flowing into him.
As he finishes the last one, the entire party feels the rush of power they have come to associate with unlocking a temple. The rush of power that Aja’s friend Kensi referred to as ‘divine spark.’
As they slowly make their way back from the rooms, Tars is still pissed that he were unable to hit the sonic creatures. Aja conjectures, “I don’t think there was anything there to actually hit. You were trying to hit air.”
“If it can hit me, I should have been able to hit it,” Tars reasons. Graykar nods in agreement.
“Not necessarily,” she continues to try and explain. “If it was a manifestation of the green crystals centralized where I saw the disturbance, a harmonic in the air where I saw the disturbance that is, it was just air. I think it was coming from the crystals.”
Tars continues to argue the point all the way back to the entrance before letting it drop once Aja says tartly, “There was nothing there, You were trying to attack air. You hit the air, happy?” Aja just shakes her head, sometimes concepts are just a little much form some of her friends to follow.
Coming up on the entrance, the party decides to rest again, before heading out to meet the giants. While they rest, they discuss the bottle they had found.
“It must mean something if it was in the temple?” Morvion insists.
Urik rolls his eyes, “Another puzzle. Great.”
Urik and Aja try and touch the bottle, and it causes freezing damage to them also. Even Aja isn’t entirely immune, “It’s cold, but it is not physically cold, it is spiritually cold. Something tied to the negative energy of undead.”
“An evil puzzle, even better,” Urik spits out.
As Morvion tries to touch it, it doesn’t burn him like the rest of the party. Taking this as a good sign, he takes off the cap, “If we all have a temple, the air temple is obviously tied to my spear.” He tries pouring the contents out. Forming on the ground, the black oily substance pools and then starts moving back toward the bottle.
The party tries several ways to interact with the substance from peaceful to destructive in that they try and set it aflame.
Carefully examining the bottle, the arcane users determine it has qualities similar to other artifacts, possibly even similar to the artifact each of them carries.
Finally, Morvion shrugs and tilts his head back, pouring the black contents into his mouth. Morvion falls dead.
The bottle rolls to the side of Morvion. The party watches aghast as the substance then begins to retreat out of Morvion’s mouth, crawling back toward the bottle.
Dunger is impressed with how little the rest of the party seems concerned, very dwarf like. he thinks until he learns that Aja has the rare ability to raise dead. She will need the night to prepare, however, she says she can do it.
The next morning, Morvion is raised. Everyone is happy to have Morvion back, though both Urik and Tars start pestering him about how it feels to die nobly in pursuit of glory. Morvion shakes his head, “Only orcs find glory in death. Dead is dead.” Taking this a cue, for the rest of the morning Tars continues to tease Morvion about his death experience.
Considering the bottle, Dunger has remained silent. He then speaks up, “Mind if I borrow the tongs, I wish to try something with bottle.”
Poring the potion out on the cloak, the oily substance reacts differently this time. Rather than trying to get back in the bottle it starts spreading out over the cloak. As it begins moving up the cloak toward Dunger, he starts trying to back away with the clock on.
"Guys - uh, Guys? I am not feeling the most comfortable about this."
Aja suppresses a giggle, she's never seen an anxiety-ridden dwarf before. "Hold on a second, the different reaction is probably a good sign."
"But Morvion died," he frantically says as he starts to undo the claps to the cloak.
"And I brought him back," Aja explained, trying to calm the dwarf. "Plus, Morvion swallowed the substance, we are just wanting to see what happens when it touches you. Besides Tars, you didn’t touch the bottle either." Aja feels fairly certain she has figured it out.
She ticks off on her fingers, "One - we know that Dunger has an artifact. Two - we know that there isn't a sixth temple of which we are aware, meaning that nothing is specific to Dunger like this air temple is to Morvion."
"However, if we allow for a temple being for multiple individuals, we would need to see some supporting evidence. We would need to see something like," again ticking off, "One - Were there doors or challenges which required Dunger to unlock? Two - was there any distinction like a fork in the road which would indicate this temple had two different sections? Three - is there a viable connection between one section of the temple and one of our artifacts."
Catching her breath, "Since we know Morvion achieved his goal, and we know that we still have an artifact level magic here unused, the next questions is - is there any artifact with a direct connection - like to shadow. I think your cloak qualifies, Dunger."
While Aja pontificates her theory, Dunger ignores her and succeeds in undoing the claps and throwing the cloak to the floor. As it sits there, the oily substance resumes moving around the cloak for another thirty seconds then starts once again moving to the bottle.
"Interesting," Aja says.
Tars then says, having a thought, "Didn't the big green man say something about their needing to be more than five of us?"
"Good point," Aja replies, now confident in her sleuthing abilities, holding up her hand again with four fingers outstretched to emphasize another point made.
Graykar then adds, "He did say that however, I got the distinct impression he wasn't being completely truthful with that statement."
Dunger doesn't like it but at Urik’s urging, he agrees to allow it to touch him. “If it hurts me, I demands Gigi as a snack.”
Sticking his head out of Aja's voluminous white hair, Gigi chirps out a few noisy squeaks in what everyone can tell are possibly sentences. Aja answers him wryly, aware that Dunger is dark attempts at humor are lost on her bat, "No, I don't think he knows that you're the conduit for all my spells. Yes, including Raise Dead. And Icy Prison. And ... you don't know Flesh to Stone!"
Dunger ponders this. “My bear side wishes to eat the bird, however the idea of becoming one with a mountain has its charm.”
"Gigi," Aja says coolly, "is not . . . a . . .bird. One would think dwarves would be more familiar with bats, given how much time they spend under the ground." Did he fail druid school to not recognize a bat from a bird?
Her voice warming, she uses metal tongs to lift the bottle of black ichor from the ground, sloshing it back and forth in a way she clearly intends to be threatening. "What's the worst that can happen?" she says, waggling her eyebrows at Morvion.
Dunger solemnly nods. “I am ready. However, if I die turn my body to stone and return me to my forest. You return me to this hellhole again and I’ll slaughter you all.”
Aja is still getting used to her new comrades short burst of grumpiness. With Dunger ready, wearing the cloak once again, she tilts the bottle to pour the liquid out on his cloak.
The black ooze slowly starts moving up the cloak toward Dunger's skin. He stolidly braces himself, staring ahead with resolute firmness. As it begins to touch his skin, he shakes a little. "It's cold. Oh boy, is it cold."
It continues to move toward his skin and starts mixing into his beard, roaming closer and closer to his mouth. Dunger finally breaks, "Yeah - time to get it off, time to get it off. It's going toward my mouth."
The party stands back, unsure of how to help. They watch as Dunger claws at the liquid with his hands. The liquid does not cling to his hands, it just keeps moving up his beard toward his mouth and nose. With his mouth firmly shut, it begins to go up his nose.
Dunger starts coughing with a ragged sound, his eyes wide. As he coughs, it gets in his mouth and starts filling it. The look of helplessness in his eyes as he pleads with the party for help causes them to stand around with paralysis, uncertain what to do. Urik begins casting healing spells trying to help Dunger, calling out to Josca for help.
Choking and spasming, his face turning blue then black. Dunger drops to the ground. He is motionless.
Aja mutters, "Crap."
Gigi chirps, "Uh oh," and begins looking for a place to hide in Aja's hair.
Tars nods, "Saw that coming. So Aja - who you having try it next?"
Morvion kneels near Dunger without actually touching him and starts into one of his solemn speeches, "Dwarf, I know few of your kind. You have managed yourself with honor. I will do my utmost to honor your death request."
Urik begins to focus so he can turn back time. Knowing he can do it and actually doing it are two different things.
Graykar says, "Well, this is something I haven't seen before. Oh wait, I saw it like just a few hours ago."
As the party stares, Dunger begins to dissolve into a black mist. After a few seconds, nothing is left of him or his equipment except a gaseous cloud floating above the floor.
“And this I really haven’t seen before,” Graykar says.
A few seconds later, the cloud begins to rise and assumes a humanoid form.
The party draws their weapons, ready for an attack.
Then the mist starts to solidify into Dunger. As it does so, he states, "Hmmpf. That was different." He then concentrates and turns into a gaseous cloud again. Then back, Then a cloud again. "I think I can do this at will."
"More clouds!!" Aja exclaims, clapping her hands together and bouncing from foot to foot.
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Author's Notes
Events occur in the month of Tanlo, 920th Year of Her Prominence. (1228 AC) Tanlo 7th and 8th.